Consternatio

Being told by my agent that I’m more or less blacklisted among editors because my first novel didn’t sell well enough to give me a second chance. This is like sending a rookie up to the plate and taking him out of the game after he fouls off the first pitch. In publishing, there’s no such thing as three strikes you’re out. Now it’s one strike and you’re finished -- for good.

I’m livid. It flies in the face of the perseverance instinct every writer is supposed to have. I’d never have gotten the first book published if I’d been inclined to give up after a hundred rejections. Make that a thousand. And so my inclination now is to fight this apparent fact of life and keep going. All of us who have struggled at any kind of serious art don’t like to think that there’s no point in carrying on, and yet, the older I get, the more obvious it is that editors don’t judge a work on its merits. They judge the writer. A seven-year-old “track record” is more meaningful to them than the quality of the book in front of them and whatever potential it might have.

I’m thinking a lot of that old Woody Allen movie, The Front, lately. He plays the public face of some blacklisted writers in the 1950s, during the McCarthy purges, helping them continue to write and earn their livings. It might be time for something like that for me. If I have to outsmart the publishing industry in order to persevere (as I’ve been taught and encouraged to do all my writing life), then, what the hell, I’ll do it. And I’m not thinking of a pseudonym either, because, for one thing, my agent seems cool to the idea. For another, there’s something ironically pathetic about assuming a fictional identity to publish fiction.

No, instead I’m thinking about my wife as my front. She’d be terrific. She’s my best editor and my best reader. She gets my slant, my approach, my style, and my intentions. And to be completely honest about it, she’d be a much better public persona than I am (was). I hated readings and appearances, radio interviews, the constant BS of marketing. She was an aspiring actress when she was younger. Now’s her chance.

I suppose there are potential legal issues that could get me in trouble. I don’t care at this point. It’s the make-or-break moment when I either dig a way around the system’s obstacles or I quit. I’m not quite ready to quit.

In fact, there’s a new idea I want to start writing notes for today...